Hawks, hockey fans deserve better than Pierre McGuire

Before I begin my rip session, let me say a kind word or two about TSN and NBC's Pierre McGuire. As hockey insiders go, he's one of the best. Aside from TSN's Bob McKenzie, McGuire is as good as anyone when it comes to trade rumors and behind the scenes knowledge. With that said, I never want to see him on NBC again.

I've never been one to get in to the whole "East Coast Bias" thing that a lot of midwest and west coast fans feel and talk about. I just don't think it that big of a deal. It's where most announcers are from, so the bias is natural.

Pierre McGuire

My beef with McGuire is different. It has nothing to do with regional biases. McGuire's bias is much harder to define. At first glance, the bias would appear to be for teams that play "physical, old school" hockey, like the Philadelphia Flyers allegedly play, but how do you explain his over the top love for the Detroit Red Wings?

Last night, I almost expected him to say, "Chicago's lucky Detroit isn't here." Instead, we got hit over the head with 2.5 hours of Dan Carcillo verbal fellatio. It was so bad, I'm expecting to see a $14.99 charge on my next cable bill.

In the second intermission, the trio of McGuire, Jeremy Roenick, and Mike Milbury were discussing how difficult it would be for the Flyers to recover if they went down 0-2 to Chicago. JR and Milbury acknowledged that they'd pretty much be done, but there was Pierre, Flyers poms poms waving, saying, "I've seen this team come back down 0-3 to the Boston Bruins." Immediately Roenick and Milbury rolled their eyes, clearly tired of McGuire's agenda. Both commentators shot Pierre down, saying the Bruins aren't the Hawks, and it will be nearly impossible for Philly to come back.

The verbal "money shot" of the program happened when McGuire suggested that Joel Quenneville was intentionally keeping Duncan Keith and Brent Seabrook off the ice when Carcillo was on. His logic was that Q didn't want his star defensemen getting hurt by an aggressive Carcillo check. How absurd can you be?

Maybe Q kept #2 and #7 off the ice because Nik Hjalmarsson and Brian Campbell could handle a thug of his talent level on their own.

Newsflash Pierre. Dan Carcillo is a dime a dozen player. Oh! He has wild hair and a silly ass moustache. Guess what. He's Adam Burish with ice time. Keith and Seabrook have bigger fish to fry than a glorified beer leaguer.

So congrats to NBC and Pierre McGuire for embarrassing themselves with a 2.5 hour love fest for a player who played 11 minutes, and finished -1 with three hits...the biggest of which came against a teammate.

Maybe for game 5 (if necessary), NBC can focus the entire broadcast on Cristobal Huet. That would be time just as well spent.

Comments

Good observations. I hate the waste of time when I could be seeing a great Ryan Miller demo or even Peter Puck. They all stink on ice. And throw in Olczyk too. I love him on Comcast and hate him on national broadcasts. He's trying too hard to not appear biased and instead he's as vapid as the rest of those jamokes.

I wish I could sync up the WGN broadcast and forget the rest. But I'm not buying a SportSync Radio for $40.

Thank. You. A friend of mine (whom I've been complaining to all day, mind you) linked this to me and I couldn't agree more. I noticed it even more on my second go-around with the game, but the absurdity of Pierre et. al. (and even Doc and Eddie were slightly guilty of it, sad to say) assuming that Duncan "I dare you to try and hit me" Keith and Brent "Treebrook" Seabrook needed to be kept away from Car Bomb to "protect" them made for lots of blank stares shooting from me to my poor, abused television set. I mean, the guy is such a chicken that he goes after *Kopey* of all people, you honestly think he's going to do anything to Seabs other than bounce off of him like a rubber ball and make the crowd laugh?

In my opinion, Q switched the pairings off the Richards line because adding Carcillo to it made a line that was already minus 7 the night before even *worse*, and as Briere was nails on Saturday... hrm... maybe Q figured that Keith and Seabs would be better served keeping him in check (which they did spectacularly)?

So yes, thank you for this article. It made me feel slightly less insane for the way I've been harping on this issue all day.

First of all, his real name is Regis. Second, he's the biggest asshat in hockey, and that's sayin' something. McGuire has spent his entire hockey life in the East. When he had the chance to show his hockey genius in Hartford, he couldn't even last a whole season. Why anyone with a hockey IQ greater than that of a sea sponge would view Regis as an expert on anything except extreme hair loss is a mystery. Other than his creepy-yet-mildly-entertaining resemblance to Dana Carvey as the Turtle Guy from Master of Disguise, he is a complete waste of space. I turn off the TV whenever he appears, as should any hockey fan.

McGuire is awful. I can't fault you Jay for writing this, but I'd rather have had your thoughts on game 2 (particularly on how the Flyers absolutely dominated the Hawks in the third). I hope you make it back onto the Score postgame shows before the series ends as it is much the lesser show with only Abatacola.

It's not a matter of perception. It's a matter of the public record. Regis is a tool of the first magnitude, and displays an appalling ignorance of hockey. Furthermore, his love of all that is Eastern Conference is well documented. The paranoid internet blatherings of semi-literate oafs unlucky enough to be stuck in Philadelphia cannot change the facts.

It's actually quite easy to quantify bias by individual commentators. In this instance, McGuire makes a finite number of statements in each of his segments. Some of these statements mention specific teams or Conferences, or players in the respective Conferences. The statements are positive, negative, or neutral. When McGuire's statements are tallied, there are more positives for the Eastern Conference or Eastern Conference teams or players than there are for Western Conference or Western Conference teams or players, and more negatives for Western Conference or Western Conference teams or players than for the Eastern Conference or Eastern Conference teams or players. It's not exactly brain surgery, even for hockey fans.

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Meet The Blogger

Jay Zawaski

Jay Zawaski is the Executive Producer of the McNeil and Spiegel Show on WSCR The Score, 670 AM. He lives in Palos Heights with his wife Hope, daughter Addie, and dog Maddux. He loves music as much as he loves sports, especially My Morning Jacket, Dawes, Dave Matthews Band, and the Hold Steady.